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Less time wasting, more patios!

— By CP | April 13th, 2010 @ 9:53am

If you live in the Mission you’ve probably noticed the marvelous sidewalk widening project that’s underway on Valencia between 16th and 18th. At my estimation the sidewalk is about 15 feet wide now which means you can ditch your former single file method and start walking in tandem with your friends. I bet you could get a human chain of at least 5-7 people going uninterrupted. Additionally, you could comfortably rollerblade (this hood is full of avid rollerbladers, didn’t you know?) - with extra wide lunges - or run with your arms outstretched in a zig zag pattern down the sidewalk. This is wicked exciting right? WRONG.

Who is planning this garbage and why am I giving you better ideas for free? Well, here it is, on the house. This project is a complete waste of time. Because of the trees planted next to the road, what we’re really getting is 3-4 feet of extra sidewalk room. OH NEAT. The extra room given is not going to allow restaurants to put tables on the sidewalk. There’s nothing cool that can happen outside. Literally, at best, you can now get around the crowd outside of Casanova on a Friday night without getting pissed off.

This city needs more fucking patios. The sidewalk widening could be great. It could extend all the way across Valencia making it a pedestrian street. A what?! Yes. Shut down Valencia. It’s a shitty street to drive on, it’s a shitty street to walk on and I’ll speculate it’s shitty to bike on too. And if it’s not, shut your pie hole and go bike down Mission Street. Just imagine, tables outside, benches, trees… Places to chill without getting a grass stain on your ass or having some dog eat your burrito. I want a place where I can hang outside and have a drink or a coffee or dinner that’s not fucking Medjool. Let’s make this happen, people.

This is a step in the right direction, yes. But those are two tables and I’d have to wait a good hour or two to sit outside on a nice day. I want the whole thing. Sidewalk the whole street. Now we’re talking.

Well, there is a little bit of satire in this… That said, many other cities (and parts of SF!) do the “enjoy the city on the streets” thing really well. In the Mission, you can easily count the places you can sit/eat on the sidewalk. Pork Store, Ti Couz, Big Lantern, Boogaloos, St. Francis, El Metate, Tartine… and none of these spaces are very large or cater to groups larger than 3 comfortably. It’s great that a few additional places on Valencia can now offer extremely limited outdoor seating, but it really doesn’t reshape the sidewalks into a community space.

The city allows people to park in the middle of the street/doublepark 4 lane roads by Churches on Sunday. I believe what happens is people either leave their cars out too long or see people doing it on Sunday and are unaware that is a one-day-a-week kinda thing.

on Guerrero people love to park by the divider island not realizing it is church related. Sunday at about 7:00pm the tow trucks come swooping in to make money for the city… the other fun spot is the middle islands on Dolores. people will park there/ get towed from there.

Back in the 50s and 60s African Americans were forced out of their SF neighborhoods for redevelopment. Some churches got moved too. Made it difficult for people to walk to their churches. So people were allowed to park creatively on Sundays around certain churches. This expanded to most any church since what thing better to worship then the car. And then it expanded to people buying burritos or going to Dolores park and such. And of course the police could never ever take away parking from church going people, now could they??? Those buying burritos don’t get such slack but those going to Dolores for special events for some reason do.

There is no law with respect to this kind of parking. The city doesn’t allow it. The issue is that the police and politicians are simply too scared to take something away that people have gotten used to.

Valencia is a pleasure to bike down (when it’s not ripped into pieces anyway). Bike lanes and lights timed at 13 MPH. Perfect. I don’t even want to think about biking down Mission, or Guerrero for that matter. Would I give up those posh bike lanes for a blocked off Valencia. Probably.